What do I think?How do I think? And more importantly, why do I think the way I do?
Did you ever wondered why we are alive, what differenciates us from the other animals? Have you ever asked yourself these questions and other similar to these?
Well, honestly, I can tell you that I never asked myself those questions. There was a time, during my adolescent years, while I pondered on those questions, but that more because it was expected of me and I really wanted to impress a teacher of mine who thought I was clever ( dear old Mrs B., she was so sweet ), rather than seriously feeling those questions. Why?
This is a very difficult answer to give.
Textbooks I am studying now, inform me that during adolescent years, teenagers are susceptible to hormonal changes and they try to adjust to the changing world, creating a niche for themselves, repudiating adults'society and forming another one among themselves.Well, the more I read those textbooks, the more I think that the authors know nothing about life... I never experiences those 'rebellious' phases. Of course, I like thinking of my youth as being wild, but compared with some other people's experience, mine was quite plainly said, dull. I always felt out of place because I never had any problems during my supposedly most difficult years. Certainly,the developement of my breasts was an incovenience, I could not play sport comfortably anymore, with those things attached to my chest that bounced up and down, but apart from that, my adolescence was unremarkable. Was I out of ordinary or were the books wrong? Talking now with some freinds of mine, I discover that many of them had the same experience of mine, i.e. no problems while growing up.
What is the gist of all this?
Well, let me try to give you a short story that I read somewhere and which describe some of my attitudes:
"Is there anything more beautiful than watching a child running in a flowering field? The mother watches her baby and tenderly smile, the child pick a flower and laugh, the flower looks up at the child and dies".
Because of what I thought was my unordinary upbringing, I always tended to think differently. I always looked for the point of view that was different from the one assumed by people. Of course, I would have loved being Whitesnow, but I always wondered why the Quees was so evil, why would the Prince Charming marry a girl he didn't know so well, just after a kiss.
The fact that I was physically different from the friends I had while growing up, made it even more difficult. I knew that I was different, mentally, that I looked at things from different points of views than my friends, but the fact that I desperately also wanted to conform, and be one of the many, not the one everyone notice immediately, was very conflicting for me. To solve the dilemma, then, I decided that I would just put my brain at rest, and wake it up whenever I would find the right kind of people to understand me.
I thought that my brain my be awaken in highschool, but I was disappointed by the bunch of adolescents who just go nuts for the opposite sex, and whose only purpose in life, seems to find what they call a soul mate, even if they know that there is a high probability that by the end of the first year together, both parties of the couple will have found other partners.
I thought I found the right environement when I came to university, but even here, I found that people were more interested in the other sex ( of course in larger scale, since there is a much bigger population to choose from ) than in the pleasures of the brain.
So what was I to do? I decided that I would have to do it all alone. After so many years keeping my brain asleep, it's quite hard trying to awaken it, but I am trying to do it. All the Latin I have learnt, does not help me at all. But then I feel more satisfaction when I do things alone, my own way, because I know I did it all by myself, that I learnt to be self-reliant.
What do all these words mean. Well, it has all been a flux of conscience ( read Ulysse, by Joyce ) that might not explain directly or logically the kind of person i am or the reason why I think a certain way, but still it is a good example of the way I think. I know some people will not be able to recognize me, but we all have an inner life that we most jealously protect from other people's prying. This is me, take it or leave it.
It does not even mean that I am a lonely kind of person: I am terribly social. Even going shopping, I can't go alone, I like going with someone else, otherwise I feel alone.I used to think that I preferred the company of other people to that of myself.Now I just think that , not matter how much i might complain, I like company, if it is not too much.